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OWASP Top 10-2017 (En) PDF
OWASP Top 10-2017 (En) PDF
A10:2017 - Insufficient Logging & Monitoring….…..….. 16 OWASP is a new kind of organization. Our freedom from
commercial pressures allows us to provide unbiased,
+D - What’s Next for Developers ….………..….. 17 practical, and cost-effective information about application
+T - What’s Next for Security Testers .……..….. 18 security.
+O - What’s Next for Organizations ….....…….... 19 OWASP is not affiliated with any technology company,
although we support the informed use of commercial security
+A - What’s Next for Application Managers ...... 20 technology. OWASP produces many types of materials in a
collaborative, transparent, and open way.
+R - Note About Risks ……..……………………. 21
The OWASP Foundation is the non-profit entity that ensures
+RF - Details About Risk Factors ……………..…. 22
the project's long-term success. Almost everyone associated
+DAT - Methodology and Data …..………………… 23 with OWASP is a volunteer, including the OWASP board,
chapter leaders, project leaders, and project members.
+ACK - Acknowledgements ………………..………. 24 We support innovative security research with grants and
infrastructure.
This document is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 license.
For any reuse or distribution, you must make it clear to others the license terms of this work.
2
FW Foreword
Foreword
Insecure software is undermining our financial, healthcare, defense, energy, and other critical infrastructure. As our software
becomes increasingly complex, and connected, the difficulty of achieving application security increases exponentially. The
rapid pace of modern software development processes makes the most common risks essential to discover and resolve
quickly and accurately. We can no longer afford to tolerate relatively simple security problems like those presented in this
OWASP Top 10.
A great deal of feedback was received during the creation of the OWASP Top 10 - 2017, more than for any other equivalent
OWASP effort. This shows how much passion the community has for the OWASP Top 10, and thus how critical it is for
OWASP to get the Top 10 right for the majority of use cases.
Although the original goal of the OWASP Top 10 project was simply to raise awareness amongst developers and managers,
it has become the de facto application security standard.
In this release, issues and recommendations are written concisely and in a testable way to assist with the adoption of the
OWASP Top 10 in application security programs. We encourage large and high performing organizations to use the OWASP
Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS) if a true standard is required, but for most, the OWASP Top 10 is a great
start on the application security journey.
We have written up a range of suggested next steps for different users of the OWASP Top 10, including What’s Next for
Developers, What’s Next for Security Testers, What’s Next for Organizations, which is suitable for CIOs and CISOs, and
What’s Next for Application Managers, which is suitable for application managers or anyone responsible for the lifecycle of
the application.
In the long term, we encourage all software development teams and organizations to create an application security program
that is compatible with your culture and technology. These programs come in all shapes and sizes. Leverage your
organization's existing strengths to measure and improve your application security program using the Software Assurance
Maturity Model.
We hope that the OWASP Top 10 is useful to your application security efforts. Please don't hesitate to contact OWASP with
your questions, comments, and ideas at our GitHub project repository:
• https://github.com/OWASP/Top10/issues
You can find the OWASP Top 10 project and translations here:
• https://www.owasp.org/index.php/top10
Lastly, we wish to thank the founding leadership of the OWASP Top 10 project, Dave Wichers and Jeff Williams, for all their
efforts, and believing in us to get this finished with the community's help. Thank you!
Project Sponsorship
Organizations and individuals that have provided vulnerability prevalence data or other assistance are listed on the
Acknowledgements page.
3
I Introduction
Welcome to the OWASP Top 10 - 2017!
This major update adds several new issues, including two issues selected by the community - A8:2017-Insecure
Deserialization and A10:2017-Insufficient Logging and Monitoring. Two key differentiators from previous OWASP Top 10
releases are the substantial community feedback and extensive data assembled from dozens of organizations, possibly the
largest amount of data ever assembled in the preparation of an application security standard. This provides us with
confidence that the new OWASP Top 10 addresses the most impactful application security risks currently facing
organizations.
The OWASP Top 10 - 2017 is based primarily on 40+ data submissions from firms that specialize in application security and
an industry survey that was completed by over 500 individuals. This data spans vulnerabilities gathered from hundreds of
organizations and over 100,000 real-world applications and APIs. The Top 10 items are selected and prioritized according to
this prevalence data, in combination with consensus estimates of exploitability, detectability, and impact.
A primary aim of the OWASP Top 10 is to educate developers, designers, architects, managers, and organizations about the
consequences of the most common and most important web application security weaknesses. The Top 10 provides basic
techniques to protect against these high risk problem areas, and provides guidance on where to go from here.
Constant change. The OWASP Top 10 will continue to As there are more contributors than space here, we have
change. Even without changing a single line of your created a dedicated page to recognize the contributions
application's code, you may become vulnerable as new made. We wish to give heartfelt thanks to these
flaws are discovered and attack methods are refined. organizations for being willing to be on the front lines by
Please review the advice at the end of the Top 10 in What's publicly sharing vulnerability data from their efforts. We hope
Next For Developers, Security Testers, Organizations, and this will continue to grow and encourage more organizations
Application Managers for more information. to do the same and possibly be seen as one of the key
milestones of evidence-based security. The OWASP Top 10
Think positive. When you're ready to stop chasing would not be possible without these amazing contributions.
vulnerabilities and focus on establishing strong application
security controls, the OWASP Proactive Controls project A big thank you to the more than 500 individuals who took
provides a starting point to help developers build security the time to complete the industry ranked survey. Your voice
into their application and the OWASP Application Security helped determine two new additions to the Top 10. The
Verification Standard (ASVS) is a guide for organizations additional comments, notes of encouragement,
and application reviewers on what to verify. and criticisms were all appreciated. We know your time is
valuable and we wanted to say thanks.
Use tools wisely. Security vulnerabilities can be quite
complex and deeply buried in code. In many cases, the We would like to thank those individuals who have
most cost-effective approach for finding and eliminating contributed significant constructive comments and time
these weaknesses is human experts armed with advanced reviewing this update to the Top 10. As much as possible,
tools. Relying on tools alone provides a false sense of we have listed them on the ‘Acknowledgements’ page.
security and is not recommended.
And finally, we'd like to thank in advance all the translators
Push left, right, and everywhere. Focus on making out there who will translate this release of the Top 10 into
security an integral part of your culture throughout your numerous different languages, helping to make the OWASP
development organization. Find out more in the OWASP Top 10 more accessible to the entire planet.
Software Assurance Maturity Model (SAMM).
4
RN Release Notes
What changed from 2013 to 2017?
Change has accelerated over the last four years, and the OWASP Top 10 needed to change. We've completely refactored the
OWASP Top 10, revamped the methodology, utilized a new data call process, worked with the community, re-ordered our risks, re-
written each risk from the ground up, and added references to frameworks and languages that are now commonly used.
Over the last few years, the fundamental technology and architecture of applications has changed significantly:
• Microservices written in node.js and Spring Boot are replacing traditional monolithic applications. Microservices come with their
own security challenges including establishing trust between microservices, containers, secret management, etc. Old code never
expected to be accessible from the Internet is now sitting behind an API or RESTful web service to be consumed by Single Page
Applications (SPAs) and mobile applications. Architectural assumptions by the code, such as trusted callers, are no longer valid.
• Single page applications, written in JavaScript frameworks such as Angular and React, allow the creation of highly modular
feature-rich front ends. Client-side functionality that has traditionally been delivered server-side brings its own security challenges.
• JavaScript is now the primary language of the web with node.js running server side and modern web frameworks such as
Bootstrap, Electron, Angular, and React running on the client.
New issues, supported by data:
• A4:2017-XML External Entities (XXE) is a new category primarily supported by source code analysis security testing tools
(SAST) data sets.
New issues, supported by the community:
We asked the community to provide insight into two forward looking weakness categories. After over 500 peer submissions, and
removing issues that were already supported by data (such as Sensitive Data Exposure and XXE), the two new issues are:
• A8:2017-Insecure Deserialization, which permits remote code execution or sensitive object manipulation on affected platforms.
• A10:2017-Insufficient Logging and Monitoring, the lack of which can prevent or significantly delay malicious activity and breach
detection, incident response, and digital forensics.
Merged or retired, but not forgotten:
• A4-Insecure Direct Object References and A7-Missing Function Level Access Control merged into A5:2017-Broken Access
Control.
• A8-Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF), as many frameworks include CSRF defenses, it was found in only 5% of applications.
• A10-Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards, while found in approximately 8% of applications, it was edged out overall by XXE.
A4 – Insecure Direct Object References [Merged+A7] ∪ A4:2017-XML External Entities (XXE) [NEW]
A9 – Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities A9:2017-Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities
Asset
Attack Weakness Control Impact
Function
Attack Weakness Impact
Asset
Weakness Control
Sometimes these paths are trivial to find and exploit, and sometimes they are extremely difficult. Similarly, the harm that is
caused may be of no consequence, or it may put you out of business. To determine the risk to your organization, you can
evaluate the likelihood associated with each threat agent, attack vector, and security weakness and combine it with an
estimate of the technical and business impact to your organization. Together, these factors determine your overall risk.
A2:2017-Broken Application functions related to authentication and session management are often implemented
incorrectly, allowing attackers to compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens, or to exploit
Authentication other implementation flaws to assume other users’ identities temporarily or permanently.
Many web applications and APIs do not properly protect sensitive data, such as financial,
A3:2017- healthcare, and PII. Attackers may steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit
Sensitive Data card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. Sensitive data may be compromised without extra
Exposure protection, such as encryption at rest or in transit, and requires special precautions when
exchanged with the browser.
A4:2017-XML Many older or poorly configured XML processors evaluate external entity references within XML
External documents. External entities can be used to disclose internal files using the file URI handler,
Entities (XXE) internal file shares, internal port scanning, remote code execution, and denial of service attacks.
A5:2017-Broken Restrictions on what authenticated users are allowed to do are often not properly enforced.
Attackers can exploit these flaws to access unauthorized functionality and/or data, such as access
Access Control other users' accounts, view sensitive files, modify other users’ data, change access rights, etc.
Security misconfiguration is the most commonly seen issue. This is commonly a result of insecure
A6:2017-Security default configurations, incomplete or ad hoc configurations, open cloud storage, misconfigured
HTTP headers, and verbose error messages containing sensitive information. Not only must all
Misconfiguration operating systems, frameworks, libraries, and applications be securely configured, but they must
be patched and upgraded in a timely fashion.
XSS flaws occur whenever an application includes untrusted data in a new web page without
A7:2017- proper validation or escaping, or updates an existing web page with user-supplied data using a
Cross-Site browser API that can create HTML or JavaScript. XSS allows attackers to execute scripts in the
Scripting (XSS) victim’s browser which can hijack user sessions, deface web sites, or redirect the user to
malicious sites.
A8:2017- Insecure deserialization often leads to remote code execution. Even if deserialization flaws do not
Insecure result in remote code execution, they can be used to perform attacks, including replay attacks,
injection attacks, and privilege escalation attacks.
Deserialization
A9:2017-Using Components, such as libraries, frameworks, and other software modules, run with the same
Components privileges as the application. If a vulnerable component is exploited, such an attack can facilitate
with Known serious data loss or server takeover. Applications and APIs using components with known
vulnerabilities may undermine application defenses and enable various attacks and impacts.
Vulnerabilities
A10:2017- Insufficient logging and monitoring, coupled with missing or ineffective integration with incident
Insufficient response, allows attackers to further attack systems, maintain persistence, pivot to more systems,
Logging & and tamper, extract, or destroy data. Most breach studies show time to detect a breach is over
200 days, typically detected by external parties rather than internal processes or monitoring.
Monitoring
A1 Injection
7
:2017
Threat Attack Security
Agents Impacts
Vectors Weakness
:2017
Threat Attack Security
Agents Impacts
Vectors Weakness
:2017
Threat Attack Security
Agents Impacts
Vectors Weakness
:2017
Threat Attack Security
Agents Impacts
Vectors Weakness
:2017
Threat Attack Security
Agents Impacts
Vectors Weakness
:2017
Threat Attack Security
Agents Impacts
Vectors Weakness
:2017
Threat Attack Security
Agents Impacts
Vectors Weakness
:2017
Threat Attack Security
Agents Impacts
Vectors Weakness
Establish & Use Repeatable Security Processes and Standard Security Controls
Whether you are new to web application security or already very familiar with these risks, the task of producing a secure web
application or fixing an existing one can be difficult. If you have to manage a large application portfolio, this task can be
daunting.
To help organizations and developers reduce their application security risks in a cost-effective manner, OWASP has
produced numerous free and open resources that you can use to address application security in your organization. The
following are some of the many resources OWASP has produced to help organizations produce secure web applications and
APIs. On the next page, we present additional OWASP resources that can assist organizations in verifying the security of
their applications and APIs.
To produce a secure web application, you must define what secure means for that application.
Application OWASP recommends you use the OWASP Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS) as a
Security guide for setting the security requirements for your application(s). If you’re outsourcing, consider
Requirements the OWASP Secure Software Contract Annex. Note: The annex is for US contract law, so please
consult qualified legal advice before using the sample annex.
Application Rather than retrofitting security into your applications and APIs, it is far more cost effective to
Security design the security in from the start. OWASP recommends the OWASP Prevention Cheat Sheets
Architecture as a good starting point for guidance on how to design security in from the beginning.
Building strong and usable security controls is difficult. Using a set of standard security controls
Standard
radically simplifies the development of secure applications and APIs. The OWASP Proactive
Security
Controls is a good starting point for developers, and many modern frameworks now come with
Controls
standard and effective security controls for authorization, validation, CSRF prevention, etc.
To improve the process your organization follows when building applications and APIs, OWASP
Secure recommends the OWASP Software Assurance Maturity Model (SAMM). This model helps
Development organizations formulate and implement a strategy for software security that is tailored to the
Lifecycle specific risks facing their organization.
The OWASP Education Project provides training materials to help educate developers on web
Application application security. For hands-on learning about vulnerabilities, try OWASP WebGoat,
Security WebGoat.NET, OWASP NodeJS Goat, OWASP Juice Shop Project or the OWASP Broken Web
Education Applications Project. To stay current, come to an OWASP AppSec Conference, OWASP
Conference Training, or local OWASP Chapter meetings.
There are numerous additional OWASP resources available for your use. Please visit the OWASP Projects page, which lists all the
Flagship, Labs, and Incubator projects in the OWASP project inventory. Most OWASP resources are available on our wiki, and
many OWASP documents can be ordered in hardcopy or as eBooks.
18
Before you start testing, be sure you understand what’s important to spend time on. Priorities
Understand come from the threat model, so if you don’t have one, you need to create one before testing.
the Threat Consider using OWASP ASVS and the OWASP Testing Guide as an input and don’t rely on tool
Model vendors to decide what’s important for your business.
Understand Your approach to application security testing must be highly compatible with the people,
processes, and tools you use in your software development lifecycle (SDLC). Attempts to force
Your extra steps, gates, and reviews are likely to cause friction, get bypassed, and struggle to scale.
SDLC Look for natural opportunities to gather security information and feed it back into your process.
Choose the simplest, fastest, most accurate technique to verify each requirement. The OWASP
Security Knowledge Framework and OWASP Application Security Verification Standard can be
Testing great sources of functional and nonfunctional security requirements in your unit and integration
Strategies testing. Be sure to consider the human resources required to deal with false positives from the
use of automated tooling, as well as the serious dangers of false negatives.
Achieving You don’t have to start out testing everything. Focus on what’s important and expand your
verification program over time. That means expanding the set of security defenses and risks that
Coverage
are being automatically verified as well as expanding the set of applications and APIs being
and covered. The goal is to achieve a state where the essential security of all your applications and
Accuracy APIs is verified continuously.
No matter how good you are at testing, it won’t make any difference unless you communicate it
Clearly effectively. Build trust by showing you understand how the application works. Describe clearly
how it can be abused without “lingo” and include an attack scenario to make it real. Make a
Communicate realistic estimation of how hard the vulnerability is to discover and exploit, and how bad that
Findings would be. Finally, deliver findings in the tools development teams are already using, not PDF
files.
19
• Document all applications and associated data assets. Larger organizations should consider
implementing a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) for this purpose.
• Establish an application security program and drive adoption.
Get Started • Conduct a capability gap analysis comparing your organization to your peers to define key
improvement areas and an execution plan.
• Gain management approval and establish an application security awareness campaign for the
entire IT organization.
• Identify the protection needs of your application portfolio from a business perspective. This
should be driven in part by privacy laws and other regulations relevant to the data asset being
Risk Based protected.
Portfolio • Establish a common risk rating model with a consistent set of likelihood and impact factors
Approach reflective of your organization's tolerance for risk.
• Accordingly measure and prioritize all your applications and APIs. Add the results to your CMDB.
• Establish assurance guidelines to properly define coverage and level of rigor required.
• Establish a set of focused policies and standards that provide an application security baseline for
all development teams to adhere to.
Enable with
• Define a common set of reusable security controls that complement these policies and standards
a Strong and provide design and development guidance on their use.
Foundation • Establish an application security training curriculum that is required and targeted to different
development roles and topics.
Integrate • Define and integrate secure implementation and verification activities into existing development
Security and operational processes. Activities include threat modeling, secure design and design review,
into secure coding and code review, penetration testing, and remediation.
Existing • Provide subject matter experts and support services for development and project teams to be
Processes successful.
• Manage with metrics. Drive improvement and funding decisions based on the metrics and
analysis data captured. Metrics include adherence to security practices and activities,
Provide vulnerabilities introduced, vulnerabilities mitigated, application coverage, defect density by type
Management and instance counts, etc.
Visibility • Analyze data from the implementation and verification activities to look for root cause and
vulnerability patterns to drive strategic and systemic improvements across the enterprise.
Learn from mistakes and offer positive incentives to promote improvements.
What’s Next for Application 20
+A Managers
Manage the Full Application Lifecycle
Applications belong to the most complex systems humans regularly create and maintain. IT management for an application
should be performed by IT specialists who are responsible for the overall IT lifecycle of an application. We suggest
establishing the role of application manager as technical counterpart to the application owner. The application manager is in
charge of the whole application lifecycle from the IT perspective, from collecting the requirements until the process of retiring
systems, which is often overlooked.
• Collect and negotiate the business requirements for an application with the business, including the
protection requirements with regard to confidentiality, authenticity, integrity and availability of all data
Requirements assets, and the expected business logic.
and Resource
• Compile the technical requirements including functional and nonfunctional security requirements.
Management
• Plan and negotiate the budget that covers all aspects of design, build, testing and operation, including
security activities.
• Negotiate the requirements with internal or external developers, including guidelines and security
requirements with respect to your security program, e.g. SDLC, best practices.
Request for
• Rate the fulfillment of all technical requirements, including a planning and design phase.
Proposals
(RFP) and • Negotiate all technical requirements, including design, security, and service level agreements (SLA).
Contracting • Adopt templates and checklists, such as OWASP Secure Software Contract Annex.
Note: The annex is for US contract law, so please consult qualified legal advice before using the
sample annex.
• Negotiate planning and design with the developers and internal shareholders, e.g. security specialists.
• Define the security architecture, controls, and countermeasures appropriate to the protection needs
Planning and and the expected threat level. This should be supported by security specialists.
Design • Ensure that the application owner accepts remaining risks or provides additional resources.
• In each sprint, ensure security stories are created that include constraints added for non-functional
requirements.
• Automate the secure deployment of the application, interfaces and all required components,
including needed authorizations.
• Test the technical functions and integration with the IT architecture and coordinate business tests.
Deployment, • Create "use" and "abuse" test cases from technical and business perspectives.
Testing, and • Manage security tests according to internal processes, the protection needs, and the assumed threat
Rollout level by the application.
• Put the application in operation and migrate from previously used applications if needed.
• Finalize all documentation, including the change management data base (CMDB) and security
architecture.
• Operations must include guidelines for the security management of the application (e.g. patch
management).
Operations • Raise the security awareness of users and manage conflicts about usability vs. security.
and Change • Plan and manage changes, e.g. migrate to new versions of the application or other components like
Management OS, middleware, and libraries.
• Update all documentation, including in the CMDB and the security architecture, controls, and
countermeasures, including any runbooks or project documentation.
• Any required data should be archived. All other data should be securely wiped.
Retiring • Securely retire the application, including deleting unused accounts and roles and permissions.
Systems
• Set your application’s state to retired in the CMDB.
21
3 3 3
Average * 2
= 3.0
= 6.0
22
Attack Security
RISK Threat
Vectors Weakness Impacts Score
Agents Exploitability Prevalence Detectability Technical Business
A1:2017- App App
Specific EASY: 3 COMMON: 2 EASY: 3 SEVERE: 3 Specific 8.0
Injection
Exposure of Private Information is clearly the highest-ranking vulnerability, but fits very easily as an additional emphasis into
the existing A3:2017-Sensitive Data Exposure. Cryptographic Failures can fit within Sensitive Data Exposure. Insecure
deserialization was ranked at number three, so it was added to the Top 10 as A8:2017-Insecure Deserialization after risk
rating. The fourth ranked User-Controlled Key is included in A5:2017-Broken Access Control; it is good to see it rank highly
on the survey, as there is not much data relating to authorization vulnerabilities. The number five ranked category in the
survey is Insufficient Logging and Monitoring, which we believe is a good fit for the Top 10 list, which is why it has become
A10:2017-Insufficient Logging & Monitoring. We have moved to a point where applications need to be able to define what
may be an attack and generate appropriate logging, alerting, escalation and response.
For 2017, the incidence rate was calculated by how many applications in a given data set had one or more of a specific
vulnerability type. The data from many larger contributors was provided in two views. The first was the traditional frequency
style of counting every instance found of a vulnerability, while the second was the count of applications in which each
vulnerability was found in (one or more times). While not perfect, this reasonably allows us to compare the data from Human
Assisted Tools and Tool Assisted Humans. The raw data and analysis work is available in GitHub. We intend to expand on
this with additional structure for future versions of the Top 10.
We received 40+ submissions in the call for data, and because many were from the original data call that was focused on
frequency, we were able to use data from 23 contributors covering ~114,000 applications. We used a one-year block of time
where possible and identified by the contributor. The majority of applications are unique, though we acknowledge the
likelihood of some repeat applications between the yearly data from Veracode. The 23 data sets used were either identified
as tool assisted human testing or specifically provided incidence rate from human assisted tools. Anomalies in the selected
data of 100%+ incidence were adjusted down to 100% max. To calculate the incidence rate, we calculated the percentage of
the total applications there were found to contain each vulnerability type. The ranking of incidence was used for the
prevalence calculation in the overall risk for ranking the Top 10.
24
+ACK Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements to Data Contributors
We’d like to thank the many organizations that contributed their vulnerability data to support the 2017 update:
• ANCAP • Contrast Security Services bv • Purpletalk
• Aspect Security • DDoS.com • Khallagh • Secure Network
• AsTech Consulting • Derek Weeks • Linden Lab • Shape Security
• Atos • Easybss • M. Limacher IT • SHCP
Dienstleistungen
• Branding Brand • Edgescan • Softtek
• Micro Focus Fortify
• Bugcrowd • EVRY • Synopsis
• Minded Security
• BUGemot • EZI • TCS
• National Center for
• CDAC • Hamed Cyber Security • Vantage Point
• Checkmarx • Hidden Technology • Veracode
• Colegio LaSalle • I4 Consulting • Network Test Labs Inc. • Web.com
Monteria • Osampa
• iBLISS Seguran̤a &
• Company.com Intelig̻encia • Paladion Networks
• ContextIS • ITsec Security
For the first time, all the data contributed to a Top 10 release, and the full list of contributors is publicly available.
And everyone else who provided feedback via Twitter, email, and other means.
We would be remiss not to mention that Dirk Wetter, Jim Manico, and Osama Elnaggar have provided extensive assistance.
Also, Chris Frohoff and Gabriel Lawrence provided invaluable support in the writing of the new A8:2017-Insecure
Deserialization risk.